After some new-home shopping on our way out of the Hartsel area, we rode into Salida after a rapid descent through the Sawatch Range from over 10,000 feet with the Collegiate Peaks in view.
Once in town, we stumbled upon the Simple Lodge, a great hostel right in the heart of town. The hostel was started by a few Colorado transplants: John, Julie, and Kim. We explored town, had dinner at Amicas, and watched #1 USC lose.
We said goodbye to Josh and Christine before heading over to Amazing Grace Natural Foods for our healthiest breakfast of the trip. We then had a leisurely ride up the railway-grade Boreas Pass with stunning Aspen views. The road was once the route for the Denver, South Park and Pacific narrow gauge railroad, which traveled from Denver to Leadville during the mining boom. We have begun to appreciate the limitations of early railroads in that their grades are limited to around 3%, making for easy climbs and long, fast descents.
After a quick stop in the Como Mercantile, we were completely disappointed
Many changes occur with the passage of summer into autumn, but in the Colorado Rockies perhaps the most notable transformation is that of the Aspen leaves from green into a vibrant yellow. Our first day riding of fall started with an easy cruise along the Dillon-to-Frisco bike path paralleling Route 9. In scenic Frisco we enjoyed coffee and pastries. It was here we decided to split our party of three for the first time.
We spent a relaxing day in Dillon, CO just catching up on things, buying groceries, doing some laundry, and replacing our Extrawheel trailers (both Brett and Jeff had Extrawheel send out some new frames as a warranty replacement).
In a surprise development, Jeff had a voicemail waiting for him on Kelly’s phone.
Over the course of our trip we’ve followed, watched, bathed in, drank from, forded and enjoyed quite a few rivers and creeks. They’ve ranged from whitewater to barely trickling, crystal clear to opaque (some just muddy, some from bovine waste) and well-known to never heard of. Some of the more notable include the Snake, Elk, Swan, Big Hole, Wise, Warm River, Flathead, Red Rock and many others.
Bodies at rest like to stay that way. So after two days in Steamboat we got a late start today. Fellow thru-riders Daniel and Ben have parted ways, heading off on side-trips to Boulder and Estes Park. When we eventually left Steamboat we traveled south through an extremely Steamboat-ish rural setting, and eventually into the Sarvise BLM land (maybe Sarvis or Service…another case of spelling issues since every sign or mention of it was spelled differently). We then climbed over Lynx pass and began the steep decent into the small town of Radium.
Steamboat is just too good, we can’t leave. We decided to take another day off today and spent the entire day getting caught up on blog entries, eating more than we should and moving as little as possible.
After pushing to get to Steamboat a day ahead of schedule we decided to hang around and enjoy a real town for a couple days. We set out to find a new hotel room – after housing 5 GDR riders Room #105 at the Alpine Lodge is no longer usable due to the terrible smell that will forever inhabit it. As we waited for our bikes to get tuned we uploaded all of our pictures and video clips and retrieved some packages from the post office. Brett and Jeff got new, abrasion-resistant dry bags from Pacific Outdoor (Thanks Pacific Outdoor!) and Kelly got cookies and other goodies from friends (Thanks Jenny, Jeanni, Adele and probably Toberer).
All of our new pictures and videos can be found on Brett’s Flickr site. We uploaded some short video segments and were able to geo-tag many of the photos.
We decided to make it another long day today in order to get into Steamboat Springs a day earlier than planned. After several days in the desolate Great Divide Basin, it was nice to start off the ride by passing through Aspen Alley in the Sierra Madre Mountains. The beautiful scenery continued as we rode through Medicine Bow National Forest into Colorado and rode into Columbine, CO (not to be confused with Columbine HS) just north of Steamboat Lake. Luckily the timing of our trip perfectly conincides with the changing leaves in the Rockies so we should continue to enjoy some amazing views. Our last stop before Steamboat was Clark Store, essentially an entire town contained in a single building – convenience store, deli, bakery, ice cream parlor, library, post office, video store, liquor store, general store, pharmacy, etc.
For several weeks during the Fall of 2008 three friends cycled the 2,714-mile Great Divide Route from Banff, Alberta to Mexico.
